Warm-up your body and your mind

Warm-up your body and your mind

Women’s National Team training camp warm-up at the U.S. Olympic Training Center

Warming your mind and body up is one key to success in any endeavor. You can warm your mind and body by doing vigorous exercises while motivating your self. Examples of motivating yourself include: telling your self how and why you will execute your skills or how and why you have trained so hard or how and why you intend to react in certain situations.

This form of warming up not only gets your muscles warm and pliable, it also reaffirms your mind that you are ready. Some examples of exercises include: jumping jacks, shadow wrestling, running in place, and jumping rope. The idea behind this type of warming up is mental and physical for a purpose. Your mind can wonder at any given time unless you control it. And, if you persistently (all the time) motivate yourself while exercising, you energize your mind and body.

It is essential for you to have practiced how you will warm up or get your mind and body ready for action. Everything in life takes practice – whether it is walking or talking or algebra or warming up. Most of you warm up with your teams and this is good. Some of you forget these key warm ups for tournaments or competition. You may warm up the same way you do for practice for your matches. Add the mental element to your warm ups, and, you will have complete control of your self.

Warming down is also important. You can warm down physically by walking around or doing lighter (using less energy) exercises. This lets the blood flow back to all of the muscles and organs of your body (re-energizing or re-fueling you) rather than pooling blood in any one area which causes you to feel sluggish and tired. As you are warming down, it is also important to analyze what happened and why in your mind. If you made a mistake, ask your coach or teacher how and why the mistake happened so you can correct it. If you made no mistakes, ask your self how you could have done better. Either way, congratulate yourself because of your effort and trying.